Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of media playback and more particularly to the field of podcasting for computer communications networks.
Description of the Related Art
Historically, content has been disseminated for public consumption through each of the print medium, video medium and audio medium. Early forms of content publication relied exclusively upon print media such as newspapers, books and magazines. The early age of motion pictures provided an alternative mode of content distribution—typically through news reels preceding a feature film. Radio also provided a mode of content distribution in which consumers listen to content rather than view or read content. The dawn of television further advanced the distribution of content in an audiovisual medium to a degree rivaling print media. The explosive adoption of the World Wide Web as a primary source of content for consumption, however, remains unprecedented.
Media storage and handling technologies including modern audio and video compression algorithms when merged with the accessibility of the World Wide Web, provide for wide variety of modes of content distribution to please every conceivable type of prospective content consumer. Through the gateway of a simple Web page, content browsers can retrieve text, imagery, audio, video and audiovisual materials with a single click of a mouse button. Recent advances in broadband connectivity render the exercise of streaming media for viewing in a Web browser a simplistic exercise. However, most media browsing technologies of the Internet require persistent connectivity to the Internet.
Notwithstanding, computing users of today are a mobile sort and seldom enjoy broadband connectivity at all times. Yet, computing users have become accustomed to consuming network distributed media content at all hours—particularly at home, while exercising or when traveling out of range of wireless network connectivity. Capitalizing on the mobile nature of computing users, well known large manufacturers of consumer electronics have engaged in a protracted effort to manufacture mobile media playback devices enabled to retrieve and store content from over the Internet—particularly music and videos—and to permit playback through the devices while lacking a network connection at a subsequent time.
Arising out of this protracted effort, new forms of media have been developed to capitalize on the nature of the mobile content consumer. Podcasting represents one such new form of media. A podcast is a brief segment of audiovisual material recorded for distribution to mobile video playback devices for playback that is not dependant upon network connectivity. Podcasts are periodic in nature in that end users often subscribe to a podcast and in consequence of a subscription, new editions of the subscribed podcast are downloaded to the mobile video playback device as those new editions become available and as the mobile video playback device obtains network connectivity to the source of the new edition of the podcast.
Despite the utility of podcasts as a content distribution medium, podcasts lack some of the elemental convenience factors of traditional print media. For example, in traditional print media a content consumer can scan an article to quickly ascertain whether the article is of interest. To the extent the article is not of interest, there is no need for the content consumer to read the entire article. So much is not so with a podcast. In a podcast, the content consumer must listen to the entirety of the podcast in order to determine whether the podcast is of interest. Recent technologies attempt to address this shortcoming of podcasting through the speech recognition of the audio portion of a podcast to permit keyword searching of the relevant portions of the podcast. Exemplary products produce a heatmap within the playback control of the podcast to indicate where in the podcast a word of interest can be found.